


The Room of Hidden Things

by Snowy_Rain



Series: Small WIPs [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: All the credit for the fanfictions go the authors, Alternate Universe, Author has lost the motivation but will not let this fic sink, Characters Reading Fanfiction, Harry reads out loud fanfiction and Tom listens to him because of course he does, How Do I Tag This, M/M, Room of Requirement, Slow Burn, Tagging as I go, Teenage Harry Potter, Teenage Tom Riddle, and I will attempt to get their permission to use their fics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:21:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24368776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowy_Rain/pseuds/Snowy_Rain
Summary: When Tom asks the Room of Requirement for greatness, it shows him a room with only a television, and the boy reading stories out loud behind the screen.Aka, a "characters reading fanfiction" fic with the most iconic fics in the fandom.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Series: Small WIPs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2051325
Comments: 67
Kudos: 132
Collections: Reading and Watching





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I'm dedicating this to Lord Volcrux because they gave me the idea :elmo:

“Warn me if someone approaches,” Tom hisses, gesturing at the spot near the grand, moulding-heavy door. “I’ll be there for a while.”

“Take your time,” Abraxas grunted, leaning casually against the wall and watching the opposite ends of the corridor.

Tom snorted at his demeanor and went inside.

The door opened with a screeching creak and gave way to a well-lit room, just on the slight side of dimmed. There were windows -- he closed the door after him and looked outside, but to his disappointment and intrigue, the glass was frosted -- and some curtains stood still at the sides where walls met, corners leading to a dais that had escaped his attention before.

On the dais, sat a machine.

“Is that,” Tom mumbled, walking toward it. “That’s a  _ television.” _

It was. Much,  _ much  _ sleeker and more improved than the ones he had seen back in London, but it was a television. The screen wasn’t curved but was instead straight like an iced lake, his reflection shining grey.

“A  _ strange  _ television,” he said, hopping onto the dais and running his fingers on the glass. He took his hand back, hesitant, and wished from the room a sofa.

It provided and he sat with relish, burning with curiosity. Tom had wished for a room that would give him what he needed the most, and this room had appeared -- he had been surprised when the room had  _ appeared  _ at all.

But what exactly was the purpose of this room? Was it perhaps going to  _ show  _ him what he needed to be great? The magic of the castle was a fascinating thing, and not even the greatest minds known to man were able to explain the origins of its strange quality.

As Tom ran his fingers over it’s sharp, black edges, red light lit up under his finger, and he pulled his hand back as if burned.

“What--” 

The screen lit up.

_ “Merlin,” a boy of fifteen, maybe sixteen swore, looking around the same room Tom was in, in awe. _

Immediately, Tom’s neck snapped around to see the intruder, but to his shock, he was alone.

_ “Weird room,” the boy murmured, looking out the window just as Tom had done. Instead of disappointment, however, his eyes showed wide-eyed wonder. “Really weird room.” _

_ As he scoured its corners, his eyes stumbled on something that wasn’t a television, but seemed to be something similar to it in design. “Hogwarts has a computer?” _

“A  _ what?”  _ Tom asked aloud, brows furrowed in confusion. That very moment, the room summoned a thin book into his lap.

_ ‘Computers And Their Workings: An Introduction’ _

“What  _ year  _ is this from?” Tom growled, tearing open the cover. Seeing the date,  _ 2010,  _ he said to himself, “Is this from the  _ future?  _ Am I going to learn what happens to me? Why haven’t I culled the Muggles yet?”

_ In the meanwhile, the teenager turned on the computer, waiting for it to load. _

_ “This looks very strange,” he said, eyes narrowing. “I’ve never seen a computer like this.” _

_ The screen opened to something that must have been familiar to the boy, but Tom had never seen anything like that -- it was almost impossible to understand what he was doing. By his efforts though, the stranger changed the screen into something white, and clicked with that strange bauble under his hands. _

_ “What’s aye-oh-three and why is it in the bookmarks?” he asked out loud and clicked again, the screen now turning into a red and white layout. _

_ A hum. “Favorited tags. That’s--” He paused. “Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter?” _

_ “Me,”  _ Tom hissed, face leaning into the screen. “Go on,  _ tell me.” _

_ “That’s me,” the boy said in a daze, who was revealed to be Harry Potter. “Merlin’s balls, what the hell is this?” _

_ The room summoned a book on Potter’s head, who let out a soft ‘ouch’. As the boy read the title, he mouthed the words and looked more incredulous the more he read. _

_ “The Magical World, Joanne Rowling’s Masterpiece,” Potter recited. Turning to what was presumably the index then to an explanation, he read out loud, “When the Harry Potter series first came out, the publishers were skeptical. When the sales hit the roof and Harry Potter became known as the-- the best fiction novels in existence…”  _

_ He had trailed off, staring at the book in horror, then at the screen, mouth open. Instead, the boy opted to read the book silently, every expression clearly shown on his face. _

__ “So I’m watching a fictional boy?” Tom asked, scowling. “Why is my name  _ there?” _

_ It can’t be,  _ he told himself, yet a growing unease rattled him.  _ I’ll reserve judgement until I-- _

_ “Is this a joke?” Potter snarled at the book, as if betrayed. “I’m clearly real!” _

“Clearly.”

_ “If all that Voldemort shtick was a story--” Tom’s breath hitched. “--then what is this?” Potter took that small, round thing in his hand again. _

“A mouse,” Tom said, looking at the book in his own hands. There was a page that described the parts of a computer.

_ One click after, Potter had changed the screen again. This time there seemed to be a list of writings cramped together, so Tom couldn’t read them from this distance. _

_ Potter’s face provided all the information, however. The horror, then the twitch of his nose in slight revulsion, then the disbelief and the curious tinge of intrigue, before the boy stood up abruptly. _

_ “Nope,” he announced to himself. “I’m not gonna do this. Voldemort is already after my fucking blood, and I’m gonna read some bullshit, made-up stories? No thanks.” _

_ He exited the room with the speed of a fleeing rabbit. _

The screen turned back into black.

_ After his blood,  _ Tom’s mind whirred with the implications.  _ If I am, doesn’t that mean that he is my enemy? _

“I see now,” he said, caressing the screen once again, this time in comprehension. “I have to get rid of him. Is that why?”

No answer came. Pondering, Tom went back outside.

“Oh,” Abraxas intoned, surprised. “You’re back early. Didn’t find anything?”

Tom hummed, intrigued. 

“No,” he said at last, “but I’ll need to come back again, tomorrow.”

“Are we returning to the Common Room then?”

“Let’s.”

  
  



	2. His Twenty Eighth Life - 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Harry Potter has been reborn again and again into new bodies as the Master of Death, some of them not human, none of them exactly like his old one—but he has always helped to defeat Voldemort in each new world. Now he’s Harry Potter again, but his slightly older brother is the target of the prophecy, and Harry assumes his role is going to be to support Jonathan in his defeat of Voldemort. At least, that’s what he thinks until Voldemort comes that Halloween night, discovers what Harry is, and kidnaps him. The story of a long fight between Voldemort’s sadism and Harry’s generosity._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [His Twenty Eighth Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11682105/chapters/26295858) the link to the work! It's fantastic and I suggest you give it a read! It uses characterization especially well, and is very, very, VERY slow burn. Overall, 10/10!

  
  


The next day, Tom was back in the room, hurrying up the dais and settling onto the sofa, the book of computers on his lap and the screen turned on in front of him.

_ The view opened to that of the boy, returned to the room just as Tom had been expecting him to. Potter glanced at the computer with disdain and stalked toward it with the grudge of a nesting dragon. _

_ “Stupid,” he said, messing up his already mussed hair. “Maybe I’m a masochist.” _

“It’s better if you are,” Tom spoke, watching as the boy turned on the computer. “Better to make you scream with, I suppose.”

_ Potter changed the screen to that website -- Tom had done a bit of reading last night -- from earlier. _

_ “There are filters,” the boy mumbled, playing with a few features. In the end, the site loaded again and he narrowed his eyes at the screen, humming thoughtfully. _

_ “That one looks interesting,” he said and clicked.  _

To his surprise, Tom heard him read the words out loud, as if narrating the story himself. He leaned back and dreaded going through a long,  _ long  _ period of this. Hopefully, Potter was a good storyteller.

The stars tumbled in lazy patterns around him, more like nebulae than anything else. Harry lifted his head and shivered. Or the thing that was currently being his head, he thought. It was difficult to tell.

He hadn’t been born into another timeline yet, after all.

The stars dazzled around him and invented patterns he would never remember afterwards. The cold grew fiercer until it squeezed like a fist, and Harry drifted expectantly along. It never got like that except right before he was carried into the womb of a woman or other female in labor. That meant he would be born again any moment.

He wondered idly who he would be this time. Hermione, as he had been in his eighth life? A Gryffindor who hadn’t existed in his original timeline, as he had been the second time he was born? He hoped he had hands, at least. And that nothing like his nineteenth life ever happened again.

_ I promised myself I wasn’t going to think about life number nineteen. _

Harry watched as the stars that sped overhead began to spin and narrow in on him. He smiled a little. Or made the thing that would be a smile when he had lips again, at least. Honestly, he had long since accepted that he’d doomed himself to this, by collecting all the Deathly Hallows. At least he had a purpose in his lives. At least he had always won every war, from the first one on, with Voldemort, and he did it with less loss of life. In his last life, when he had been Neville’s younger brother Humphrey, he had even managed to get Harry Potter to pay attention to the Horcruxes earlier, and only Quirrell had died after the first war was done. And he’d had a nice life afterwards, and children with Cho Chang who he would remember fondly.

As he remembered all his children, all his wives, all his lovers, all his parents and siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles. He forgot nothing now, apparently another “gift” of being the Master of Death.

Potter read the story with clear, focused eyes, as if a man on a mission. Tom quickly found himself immersed in the story, the teenager’s reading voice just deep enough to provide enjoyment. It was obvious that these persons listed had some sort of significance to Potter, since he looked completely contained within his own world.

The part that made him shiver and still, was the mentions of the war with Voldemort -- the war with  _ him.  _ This boy in the story had defeated him, and this boy clearly wanted to. Tom needed to find what the Room intended him to find, and as  _ quickly  _ as possible.

He gasped as the stars winked out entirely and the cradling cold was warmth, and he found himself tumbling free into the grip of a pair of hands. Light struck at his eyes, and he waved his clumsy fists—he always hated this part—and wailed, more because he knew they would be anxious if he didn’t than because anything hurt.

“Oh, thank Merlin,” the woman holding him said in a hushed voice as she cradled Harry against her chest. “I thought—for a minute I thought…” She let her voice trail off.

Harry would have nodded if he could have focused his eyes or his control of his neck at the moment. That had happened more than once, too, and tended to confirm his suspicions that his soul traveled into the bodies of babies who would otherwise be born dead.

Or Kneazle kittens or snake hatchlings, sometimes. The Master of Death wasn’t confined to one species any more than he was to one gender.

Or sometimes—

_ I am not going to think about life number nineteen. _

_ “What  _ is  _ life number nineteen?” Potter murmured, snorting. _

“Do you want to see your son, Mrs. Potter?” the woman asked then, and looked up the bed at Harry’s mother. “He looks perfect.” She used a gentle spell to remove the blood and other juices from Harry’s body, and then snipped the umbilical cord off.

Harry’s mind was reeling, meanwhile. _ Potter? _ Really? He hadn’t been born a Potter since his third life, when he’d been the daughter of a brother James hadn’t had in his original lifetime. He was still trying desperately to focus his eyes when the midwife leaned in and gently deposited him on his mother’s chest.

It was cheating, but he used a bit of his magic to make his eyes sharper. He would pay for that later, since his body was so young, but he wanted to see—

Red hair. Green eyes. Lily Potter reached down to him, murmuring lovingly, “Hello, little Harry. I can’t wait for your father to see you.”

_ Wow, _ Harry thought, and let his eyesight lapse again. Lily was getting ready to nurse him, anyway, and although he’d long since been resigned to this as the food his infant body needed, he didn’t need to look too closely, either.

_ Potter paused there, then said, “Nursing… Now  _ that’s  _ something I never wanted to think about.” _

He suckled gently and listened while Lily exchanged a few words with the midwife. Then there was the sound of a door opening, and small running feet, and a laughing voice that Harry knew, because he had often heard it in his past lives. “Don’t just go bouncing up and grabbing your brother now, Jonathan. Mummy’s feeding him. And he’s too little to play yet.”

Harry waved his fists again, the only gesture of welcome he could make, as Lily nursed him a moment more, and then handed him off to James. Harry _ could  _ see there was a smaller blur off to the side, about the size of a toddler.

_ So. That’s Jonathan. My older brother? Huh. _ Harry spared a moment to hope that meant the Potters weren’t going to be targeted by Voldemort. The Boy-Who-Lived wasn’t always a Potter across the universes, or a boy, or in existence.

_ Potter stopped and gazed at the text for some time, looking wistful and somber. “A brother, huh.” _

_ Orphan,  _ Tom thought immediately.  _ Or is he?  _ Like him, someone trying to carve his way out of life’s burdens?

“He’s got your eyes, Lils,” said James, his voice so besotted that Harry managed to gurgle. James laughed and tickled him under the chin. “You know your dad, don’t you, little Marauder?” he asked, and then he turned and offered Harry to the boy who was rocking back and forth. “You have to stand still if you want to hold your brother, Jonathan.”

Jonathan immediately did. Harry could glimpse that he had dark hair, anyway, although his eyes were distant and Harry couldn’t make out the color. James kept his arms locked beneath Jonathan’s, gently helping him support Harry’s weight.

Jonathan just stared and gaped for a while, Harry thought. Anyway, he could see teeth. Then Jonathan looked up and blurted out, “He’s going to cry and sleep a lot, right?”

James and Lily both laughed. Harry gurgled again. James took Harry back and balanced him expertly in his own hold. “Yes, he will. But I promise he’ll be a lot more interesting in a few months.”

“I wanna show him to Fred and George!”

_ Potter snorted, then chortled. “Fred and George,” he repeated. “Fred and George!” _

“What’s so  _ funny,  _ Potter?” Tom asked, but it was clear that these names were not made-up at all, perhaps sans the brother. He resigned himself to listening to the boy without any clue as to these people’s identities, though it seemed that Lily and James  _ were  _ his parents. He wondered if he should ask Abraxas about the Potters.

James cleared his throat uncomfortably, and Harry had the impression of him turning his head to exchange a glance with Lily. Lily reached out then and pulled Jonathan onto the bed, holding him close. Harry stared at his brother with interest now that he was nearer. He did have dark hair, and big, solemn dark eyes.

“I’m afraid you can’t do that yet, Jon-Jon,” Lily said softly. “We—still have to stay inside the bubble for a while longer.”

“But I don’t  _ wanna!” _

“Hush, you’ll wake up your brother,” Lily promptly scolded.

_ They think I’m asleep? _ But then Harry became aware that his eyes were closing, and his body was settling harder and heavier into his father’s arms, and he was drifting off even though he wanted to stay awake and listen to the conversation. He flicked his magic and tried to send it racing through his body to make his eyes fly open, but it didn’t work. He really had exhausted it too much earlier.

Nothing could prevent him from thinking as he drifted off, though.

_ Bloody infant body. _

*

His family was wonderful.

Lily was so  _ gentle.  _ Harry had never known her well in his original life, of course, and although sometimes he had got to know her later in his other lives, it had never been as his mother. She had been a grim warrior without children in a few of them, she had stood in front of him and given up her life for his first self, and she had killed Voldemort herself once on a rain-soaked battlefield that Harry still didn’t like to remember in his seventh life. He appreciated her fiercer qualities.

_ Murdered me,  _ ran through Tom’s mind, becoming a whirlpool of trepidation.  _ She  _ **_murdered_ ** _ me. _

_ “Killed him,” Potter said, apparently on the same thought track as him. “Merlin, that’s amazing.” _

“No it’s  _ not.” _

But he had never known that she could cradle him with one arm and sing soft lullabies that trailed off so slowly Harry never knew when he crossed from listening to sleeping. She would dance around the room with him, holding him so carefully that he never felt a bump. She spent minutes just sitting there and smiling down at him, teasing him with a finger under his chin.

Her voice when James took Harry away and tossed him in the air was  _ not  _ gentle, but Harry would laugh as loud as he could when he didn’t always have control of his voice, and in the end, Lily had to admit that Harry did seem to like it.

“You’re just lucky that both your sons are exactly like you,” she told James one day when he’d put Harry on his shoulders with a Sticking Charm, changed into Prongs, and galloped around and around the small garden that was under the Fidelius Charm.

“Yes, I am,” James agreed, and then he leaned in and kissed Lily hard enough to make Harry glance the other way.

James was wonderful, too. He was delighted, constantly, by Harry’s and Jonathan’s very existence. He played silly games with them for hours without tiring. He told them the names of spells and classes they would take at Hogwarts in such a serious voice that Harry thought he expected understanding. He was a great storyteller, and Harry heard things about the Marauders’ time at school he never had.

Of course, he had to remind himself every time he started thinking like that, that this wasn’t his original life. Things were already fairly different. These might not be  _ his  _ Marauders,  _ his  _ Sirius and James and Remus.

_ “Merlin, how I wish that was  _ my  _ life,” Potter breathed, rubbing his thumb on the screen. “Fucking  _ Voldemort.”

Tom scowled.

But then he remembered that of course they were. He  _ was  _ the Harry Potter of this world. No, it wasn’t the same as his original one. But that didn’t matter. This was the life he would live now, his twenty-eighth life, and it was as much his as any other had been.

He did tend to think of himself as Harry and as male and as a Potter (and great Merlin,  _ that  _ had been uncomfortable the first time he’d been born a girl), but it was just a coincidence that he was in this timeline. He could let go. He could enjoy it.

*

Well, he would have been able to enjoy it unreservedly if it wasn’t for the fact that Voldemort was after Jonathan.

“What?” Tom and Potter said together, Potter with increasing worry, and Tom with incredulous suspicion. He wouldn’t go after a  _ toddler.  _ That was simply ridiculous _.  _ Why would anyone think that?

But then he looked back at Potter’s genuine worry, his sincere fear, and the niggling doubt grew. Had he gone after the teenager as well, in the future? If so,  _ why?  _ Had it been to take hostages? Potter had thought it  _ remarkable  _ that Lily Potter had killed him, so could it be that he had gone to slaughter the Potters, for daring to be a threat to him?

It was possible.

He had a perfect time to focus on the conversations that happened between his parents when Lily was feeding him, or when they changed his nappies or rocked him to sleep or held him when they thought he was already slumbering. Harry preferred to ignore these necessities as well as he could, and learning how to sleep through the night (Lily couldn’t  _ believe  _ it and kept coming to check if something was wrong with him during the first month) and resist sleep at other times was as good a distraction as any.

Jonathan, now that Harry was recovering enough mastery of his magic to sharpen his senses, was a quiet little boy, with dark hair and brown eyes and a way of listening most of the time. He missed his friends, who seemed to be mostly the Weasley twins and someone named Kelly who Harry didn’t know. He liked to talk to his little brother, and listen to stories, and fall asleep in his father’s lap.

He seemed to have been born scandalously close to the time that Lily and James were getting out of Hogwarts. Harry just laughed at that when his family could think he was laughing at something else. He’d lived so long by now that he could cheerfully accept ideas that would have shocked him about his first parents.

But they were still being hunted by Death Eaters. Neither Lily nor James had heard the full prophecy, but they knew there was one, and that it marked a boy born on “Midsummer’s Eve” as Voldemort’s doom.

“A  _ prophecy!”  _ Tom exclaimed, finally coming to the correct conclusion. “I went after them for a  _ prophecy?  _ Why is Potter still alive?”

Jonathan’s birthday was June 21st, 1978.

Harry’s was July 31st, as usual. Seriously, it had been that way in more than half his lifetimes, excluding the ones when he was born an animal and couldn’t exactly check (and life number nineteen)—but even then, he had usually been born during the summer. He didn’t know why. Maybe it had something to do with his first life, or maybe his soul had some natural affinity for bodies that were being birthed during July. Or it could have something to do with his astrological sign, for all he knew.

He knew it was the Deathly Hallows that had  _ caused  _ the whole unending reincarnation cycle in the first place, because they would show up the minute he could wield a wand and keep them concealed. But he had never met an incarnation of Death. He had never known what his title really meant. He hadn’t died the first time expecting to wake up anywhere except maybe some heaven next to Ginny.

What he  _ did  _ know was that it was 1980. He was going to be only fifteen months old when Voldemort attacked Jonathan, at least if he did it on Halloween.

Tom dutifully wrote down the date in his diary, underlining the year twice. If he had a deadline, he might as well prepare for the disaster that would inevitably happen.

At least it wasn’t three months. Harry hadn’t  _ truly  _ started sleeping through the night until his first Halloween was past.

And he supposed that he didn’t know if this life would be exactly like his first one. Voldemort had inflicted his attacks on various Boys-Who-Lived and Girls-Who-Lived and sometimes innocent animals on various days of the year. But Halloween was a favored one.

Harry didn’t know exactly what a fifteen-month-old could do when Voldemort came, especially if he was aiming for Jonathan and not Harry. But he did know one thing.

He’d known it from the first time that Lily thought Jonathan was careful enough with the new baby to hold Harry without supervision, when Harry was about five months old and it was nearly Christmas. Lily had gone to take a bath in luxurious solitude. Jonathan had sat on the couch cradling Harry and staring at him with huge eyes. He kept looking at the floor as if he thought it would leap up and snatch Harry from him.

Harry managed to reach out and grasp hold of one of Jonathan’s fingers.

Jonathan blinked and whispered, “I’ll keep you safe. I’m promising. I love you, Harry.”

Harry had known that he loved his brother.

And if he had to cut this life, as warm and wonder-filled as it had been so far, short by sacrificing his own powerful, death-enhanced magic to protect Jonathan in a blaze of love…

That’s what he would do.

_ I’ve always helped defeat Voldemort in every life. I’m still going to help do it. _

_ “End of chapter,” Potter spoke, biting his lip. “But what if the story knows how to defeat him? I could… Maybe I could just read until I know what to do?” _

Tom’s blood ran cold. At the same time, the screen fizzled out, black and reflective now -- reflecting Tom’s horrified face back at him.

“I can’t let him,” he said, clutching his diary with an iron grip. “I’ll be there with every step he takes, and I’ll know everything he knows. There is no way I’ll lose.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still waiting for the permission, but if it turns out I am not granted it, I'll be deleting this chapter and using another fic instead. Cheers!


	3. His Twenty Eighth Life - 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit: ooppsie whoopsie daisy, looks like i missed some clues tom would have caught. D: Lemme just.... fix it while no one has noticed

In a strike of intuition, Tom had turned on the television once more before leaving. What he found out was that only the “chapters” were divided into sessions, but he did not have to let the day pass to reach the next one.

Potter returned with a grim, determined face, like a soldier marching to die -- which might be true, in a few decades -- and sat with a straight back, which soon became a hunched one while the computer loaded.

“Gryffindor buffoon,” Tom spat, sneering at the boy’s passive expression. “Be a bit more mindful of yourself, won’t you?”

_“Back at it again,” Potter grumbled, clicking away at his mouse while the website loaded. Tom watched dispassionately as he yawned, showing all his teeth and some of his throat._

“At least cover your _mouth,”_ Tom said, lips twisting in irritation. But as Potter continued his narration, he found himself reclining back into the sofa once again, focused and tense.

Harry knew it was getting close to Halloween. James had hung up a few pumpkins and was telling stories of ghosts and black cats—the black cats were always the heroes—to Jonathan. He told them to Harry, too, although he didn’t think Harry was old enough to understand.

Harry had been that since he was born, but unfortunately, he wasn’t old enough to make his tongue work the way he wanted to. He had noticed after a few months that none of the other Marauders ever visited them, and after listening to a few more conversations when he was “asleep,” he’d found out why. Dumbledore was their Secret-Keeper. Even Sirius and Remus and Peter weren’t trusted with that secret.

“Dumbledore,” Tom repeated, disbelief _dripping_ from his tongue. “Dumbledore is in on this. _Why.”_ He paused, and wrote _Secret Keeper?_ in the diary, circling it.

_“That would have been helpful, had it_ actually _happened,” Potter said, frowning fiercely at the web page._

Tom snorted at him.

But then James, who missed his friends, had prevailed with Dumbledore to give the secret to them one at a time. Sirius had visited and tossed Harry in the air higher than James did. He got worse scoldings from Lily, too. His eyes were only a little shadowed and they shone with joy when he changed into a dog and dragged Jonathan around the drawing room in a little sleigh.

Remus didn’t appear. Harry had tried to hint that Remus wasn’t evil by asking about him and even saying simple, child-believable things like, “Moony good!” But Sirius had just ruffled his hair and smiled sadly, and James teased Lily about her sons growing up to be half-Ravenclaws just like her, since Harry was way too smart and speaking too clearly for thirteen months old.

“Moony can’t come, pup,” Sirius said, and balanced Harry on his knee and bounced him up and down under the mistaken impression that that was what he wanted. “He just—well, never mind. Maybe we’ll see him someday.”

_You suspect Remus and you trust Peter?_ Harry had thought the next time Pettigrew was visiting. He cringed way too much, and never took off his long-sleeved robes even when James or Lily routinely invited him to.

_“Dirty little rat,” Potter growled and read on, voice a little harsher._

But there wasn’t much Harry could do about it. He did try to stumble over to Peter and “accidentally” yank his left sleeve down so that they could see the Dark Mark. But either James would swoop him up and fly him around the room when he did that, or he was so slow that Peter had plenty of time to get out of the way. He would sit Harry on his lap and talk to him, but Harry never bothered listening to a word he said. His pulse was pounding too hot with indignation.

He tried to find a scrap of parchment and a quill, too, because he would risk a suspicious note appearing before he would risk leaving his parents and his brother to Peter. But when he did find a quill, his fists were too clumsy with baby softness. The quill just broke, and James teased Lily some more about Harry’s inherited Ravenclaw tendencies.

_I hate being a bloody baby,_ Harry thought grumpily.

He tried. How he tried. He attempted to focus his magic on Peter’s left sleeve and pull it up that way, but he was simply too bad at manipulating objects when he was this young. He could best strengthen his own body, like his eyesight, but he couldn’t even make a toy or a piece of clothing float back to him when he had dropped it.

He decided to throw all caution to the winds and talk like an adult and not a baby, but when he did, Lily just cooed at how cute he was for repeating words she seemed to think he had got out of the adult conversations, even when he was very articulate about the dangers of the Fidelius Charm. Harry decided, miserably, that she would believe he could articulate at such a young age before she would believe that one of her husband’s best friends other than Remus was evil.

His only comfort, really, was that both Sirius and Peter had the secret of the address. That might mean there wasn’t immediate blame laid on Sirius.

_Potter sighed. “Here is to hoping.”_

Not that he expected to be here to see it. He had begun to sink inwards, focusing all his magic inside himself and on the protective blaze that he would have to fling in front of Jonathan when the moment of the attack came.

_I love you. I wish I could spend longer with you._

He tried to make his every action say that to his parents and brother and Sirius, every day.

*

In the silence, the stalking silence, the circling silence, Lord Voldemort came to the Potter house.

_There,_ Tom thought. His pulse quickened, excited and afraid of how the events would unfold. _Finally. Kill him and be done with it._

But a voice inside told him that that would not be, which he did his best to ignore -- he had the _advantage_ , he could kill _anyone._

It was Halloween. Night of the darkest moments, night of the fervent and the false. Lord Voldemort was beyond such tricks as masks and costumes and frightening stories. He was the story. He was the one who had created five Horcruxes, the only surviving one, the monster of the stories, the force of the darkness. Let them fear him.

_Five. Five whole Horcruxes,_ Tom repeated in his mind, shocked and elated. Murmuring, “I have surpassed everyone in the search for immortality… “ He turned to look at Potter’s confused face. “You have no _chance_ of winning, you _idiot.”_

_“What the hell are Horcruxes?” Potter wondered._

Tom laughed out loud in response.

He crossed the garden slowly, ignoring his cringing Death Eater behind him. The man had his uses, his multiple uses. But he was done now. Lord Voldemort was here. There was no need for anyone else.

He listened, his senses reaching out, tuned to vibrations in the earth like a snake’s as well as in the air, tuned to worlds these fools could not even imagine. He could hear only the low, cheerful chatter of voices. There was one child’s voice in there, the voice of the one he had come to kill. He nodded, he moved his head with dreadful slowness like a glacier falling down upon mankind. He was here. There was no need for anyone else.

He drew his wand, his faithful tool. He lifted it high…

And hesitated.

_“What?”_ Tom said, “Why? There is nothing to _hesitate_ for.”

There was something else in that house, something beyond hearing. Not a voice, but a circling. A silence within the silence, a gathered power. It reminded Lord Voldemort of a Hidden Fire spell, the curse that could be cast on a place and would remain alert and untriggered until someone who was not the caster walked across it. Then it would blossom in fire.

This thing could do the same. This thing could cause him trouble. This thing made him wary.

Of course, he could face and conquer it. Was he not Lord Voldemort?

But there was no need to be hasty, no need to crash through the protective spells and bring the fire to flower. Lord Voldemort paced slowly around the house, raising his own charms that would make him invisible. Was he not a genius? He had perfected ones far stronger than the Disillusionment Charm.

_“Yes, yes, prattle on,” Potter snorted, and Tom scowled at his image within the screen. “Really genius.”_

When he was ready, he leaned in and studied the room the voices were coming from. The weak wizard sat on the floor, telling a story to a child that made his mind surge with hatred, like cold waves in a cave and a cold diadem in an Albanian forest and cold metal of a precious Hufflepuff artifact under his hand. This was the boy prophesied to vanquish him.

But it would not happen. Was he not Lord Voldemort?  


_Albania,_ Tom thought. _Why Albania in particular? Why use those metaphors in the same sentence? What is their connection?_

'Hufflepuff's artifact'--- that was quite specific. He had no doubt that it was one of the clues to the future, for why would the author use these items in prose without context? As this existence is... a _story,_ it must mean that it is the truth that the readers know collectively without need for exposition. He jotted down the names in the moment between Potter's one breath and the next, then continued listening.

The red-haired Mudblood sat off to the side, a book open in her lap, but her voice joining in the story. The words did not matter to Lord Voldemort. Nothing mattered except that none of them was the source of the waiting magic. So the boy was not so strong after all. Of course, he could not be. But Dumbledore was. He would have placed the magic of the trap, envisioning Lord Voldemort as the weak, pathetic child he had been when Dumbledore knew him best, foreseeing nothing but stupidity, glimpsing nothing but his own doom.

Lord Voldemort nearly drew back from the window, ready to search the rest of the house for Dumbledore’s trap. Then he realized that he had overlooked one other Mudblood in the room. He turned his head. The other child, the one Pettigrew had told him was born at the end of July last year and could not be a menace to the great Lord Voldemort, sat in the chair next to the Mudblood’s and watched the story.

The magic was clustered all around him.

Lord Voldemort narrowed his eyes and used his sharp intelligence to cut through the cobwebs and surging waves and deceptions and secrets and mysteries that would have baffled someone of lesser genius in order to find the answer. The child was gathering strong magic. It was intelligent, this gathering. It was the flower of fire. It would burst out when the child decided it would. The green eyes were bright with power. No one else noticed because they were Mudbloods and idiots.

Pettigrew had not noticed. If Lord Voldemort had not come to the house and been wary and precise and intelligent, it would have gone undiscovered until he entered and had the trap burst in his face. The trap would burst, of course. The child somehow suspected. It was magic gathered against him, because who else could it be gathered against? Who else was so much a threat?

Lord Voldemort did not believe in coincidence. If the family had one child who was prophesized to destroy him, it might have another. It must have another. That gathered magic, enfolding and reaching and swirling and waiting to flower into fire, could mean nothing else. The child was not old enough to wield it through a wand, but that would not matter if it concentrated the power into a single thrust, with a single purpose.

And his servants had not heard all prophecies.

Lord Voldemort glided to the door and changed his plans.

*

Harry raised his head. He could feel the Dark magic coming towards them, swirling in between the loved voices of his family and the warmth that surrounded them. He had known tonight would probably be the night, but not exactly when Voldemort would arrive. The hour varied even in the worlds where the attack happened on Halloween.

But he retained a sensitivity to Voldemort’s magic even though he had never been a Horcrux since his first life. He seemed to keep up talents from other lives like that. He could still speak and understand Parseltongue, and he could practice necromancy if he had to after his desperate twelfth life, and he also had certain affinities left from life number nineteen—

_Which I am not going to think about._

_What?_

Tom watched on to see whether Potter had reacted to that _life-changing_ information, but he didn't even change expressions. Horcrux, his prophesied enemy? What had the world come to? Had he truly sown his soul in this mortal boy? Was it an error of concentration on the boy's part? 

_Perhaps,_ he theorized, _he was prophesied to kill me, but to circumvent the oracle I decided to make him one of my own instead. And then my archenemy, who had planted a spy in my ranks, learnt of my living Horcrux and kidnapped him, turning him against me. Harry Potter must have done a great wrong to make me want to hunt him down. Of course, one will cut their own limbs if it is rotting--- there is no benefit to keeping a treasure that will betray me. But Potter--_

Potter did _not_ know about Horcruxes. He had said so himself, brows furrowed and lips downturned. All that Tom could think was that either it was a magical influence, keeping the boy unknowing, or just that he was a natural airhead.

He was displeased to see that he didn't know which he preferred.

Harry turned and pulled himself up on the back of the chair. He would have to scream, to attract Voldemort’s attention to him as soon as possible. The burst of sacrificial magic would only work if Voldemort killed him. And Harry didn’t dare chance releasing a bit of it, either, because that would weaken the protection he could place on Jonathan.

_I love you so much,_ he thought to his brother, whose head he could just see turning in what looked like slow motion as the door blew open. _You deserve to grow up with both your parents. I’m sorry. Goodbye._

Voldemort stalked in, looking the way he always did in Harry’s lives at this point, with dark hair and a nose, but gleaming red eyes, his body bony and thin and white, the ravaged remnants of Tom Riddle’s beauty clinging to his face. He had his yew wand, and he started to gesture.

_“A nose,” Potter deadpanned, confusing Tom._

Harry screamed as loudly as he could, “Tom Marvolo Riddle!”

Voldemort jerked towards him. The light that had been pulsing at the tip of his wand, which wasn’t green for some reason, died. Lily and James had just started to scream themselves. But as far as Voldemort was concerned, there might have been no one in the room but him and Harry. There was clear space between them. Their eyes met.

And Voldemort dived into Harry’s mind.

_Shit!_ Occlumency was a function of the physical body, too, dependent on more mature magic and a growth of that brain that was not the strange compartmentalization of the memories that Harry had learned to cope with being immortal. He wouldn’t be able to muster reasonable shields until he was much closer to seventeen. Voldemort blew through the fragile defenses Harry did try to lift, and he saw the plan to save Jonathan, he saw Harry’s fear and determination and love.

He saw…

He saw the death of the last Voldemort, in Harry’s life as Humphrey Longbottom, a writhing, shrinking, shadowy figure in the wake of the basilisk fang stabbing through the Hufflepuff cup.

Voldemort’s face twisted. Harry knew his rage and hatred by now, none better. He flung his head back and gathered his magic around himself. Voldemort was infuriated enough to kill by now.

_Make my death count._

“What’s the matter, Tom?” Harry asked softly, ignoring the way Lily tried to snatch him up. He twisted to the side and fell out of the chair and took the steps he needed to take towards Voldemort. “Afraid that someone else might figure you out?” He didn’t dare name the Horcruxes aloud. Voldemort would kill the rest of Harry’s family if he thought they might know the secret of his immortality. “Afraid that a mere _child_ could kill you?”

_Potter hummed. “Whatever these Horcruxes are, they have to be what I’m looking for.”_

“Too late,” Tom said, grinning cruelly. “You won’t find them.” _A Horcrux that doesn't even_ know _he is a Horcrux--- what use will it be if you find them?_

Voldemort’s red eyes flickered. Then his wand moved, and Harry tensed himself. He wished he could turn for one final look back at Lily, Jonathan, and James, but he didn’t dare. His focus on Voldemort had to be absolute for his wild magic to strike where he wanted it to.

But Voldemort said, _“Accio_ second Potter child.”

Harry went flying head-over-heels to land against Voldemort’s legs. Voldemort promptly snatched him off his feet and bent his head towards Harry’s ear.

And he spoke in Parseltongue, proving that he’d seen far more in Harry’s mind than he’d ever anticipated.

_“Really, Potter? You think I would chance killing anyone in this room, when I might see the Killing Curse rebound on me?”_

Harry squirmed as hard as he could, trying to focus his magic against Voldemort again. But his shock was too strong—shock that his family might live, but for the wrong reasons—and the magic had dissipated. Harry could get it back under control, but it would take moments to once again tame it and direct it to a thin point.

And within those moments, Voldemort had Stunned him and stepped out through the door again.

_“Voldemort’s -- Voldemort’s kidnapped me?” Potter sputtered, blinking and reading again. “Why? Wait -- oh, there were the memories of his previous life, so he…”_

“He should have just killed you,” Tom said, but pressed his lips together, considering the advantages of the story-Potter’s knowledge. “But what he just did might have a point.”

*

Lord Voldemort found himself well-satisfied with many things. The weight of the Potter child—who was no child—cradled in his arms, his head drooping, his mind full of the ways to avoid being defeated in the ways that other Voldemorts had been. The knowledge that _he_ was the one Lord Voldemort, the only one intelligent enough to avoid tangling with the Potters or another prophecy-marked child or his mother. The others were simply Voldemort.

The dumbfounded expression on Pettigrew’s face as he gaped at them both, and took a step back, and wavered as if he would faint. That was satisfying. That was a thing Lord Voldemort could cause, _should_ cause. Lord Voldemort revived him with a flash of his wand, and then they turned to leave.

The heartbroken wails rising behind them. Lord Voldemort heard their tenor and judged them good.

*

James stepped back into the house and tried to speak, but he couldn’t. Lily looked at him and then folded her arms slowly around Jonathan, feeling the shudder of her older son’s head against her chest. His mouth moved as if he was going to ask questions, but he didn’t manage to.

Her older son. Or her only son now?

Lily wanted to believe that Harry would survive, but she honestly didn’t know. James had run outside after Voldemort and had been in time to see him Apparate, along with a figure who looked an awful lot like Peter.

And Harry had tried to warn them against Peter, and he had spoken to Voldemort in that adult voice that—

Lily closed her eyes. She didn’t understand what was happening, why it was happening. She only understood that their life had smashed on the floor the minute Voldemort walked through the door.

And she didn’t know how to repair it. Not with such an essential piece missing.

_“End of chapter,” Potter said once again, a long-suffering sigh slipping through his lips. “I still haven’t found out what Hocruxes are.”_

“And you _won’t,”_ Tom muttered, standing up and turning off the television, certain in his knowledge that Potter was charmed to never notice a Horcrux's presence. If he had truly defected from his side, Tom would have never let him leave with the ability to find his weaknesses.

He needed some sleep.

“Done looking yet?” Abraxas asked as Tom got out, face lax and casual.

Humming, he smiled and shook his head. “No. it’s simply too large of a room. I think I’ll have to come by every night and look. You don’t need to accompany me.”

“It’s alright,” the other said, shrugging. “I don’t have much to do anyway. Rosier and Nott are being idiots back at the dorms, making unnecessary noise.”

“Tell them to stop then.”

“Ha!” Abraxas threw his head back and laughed, a stumbling and monotone sound. “I’m not you, Riddle. I can’t command an army with just my charisma -- _you_ however…”

“Perish the thought,” Tom answered the unasked question dryly, watching as Abraxas laughed again.

_Yes,_ Tom thought from the safety of his mind. _I will command armies and lay ruin to cities. Victory shall be mine._


	4. His Twenty Eighth Life - 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3rd chapter of his twenty eighth life feat. Tom Riddle character development

The very next day, Tom had prepared in advance and made time to spend long hours in the room uninterrupted, unimpeded by responsibilities. He had instructed Abraxas on what to do if the other purebloods started acting up and going off the rails, so that was one problem solved.

Tom had found a solution for the issue of the visibility of the room’s door. He had experimented with Abraxas and found out that if he wished the door invisible, it wouldn’t betray him. That had been a happy revelation.

And now he was back, seated comfortably on the couch, another book about computers and the years 2000s on his lap, as well as his diary open and ready to record any questions he had about the magics listed in the story.

He had wondered if they truly existed. If this was a fictional world, did that mean that those stories Potter had seen were merely copies? If so, how many of them were based on the original story? How many of them were nonsense? Did it even matter whether it was fictional? He had to recalibrate and see what was consistent, otherwise Potter would be the one who had the advantage. It was bad enough that Tom couldn’t read the screen himself, and was instead forced to rely on the boy’s reading. He dreaded the day that Potter would gain a smidgeon of intelligence and remember to read silently, as if he was six and not a fully capable adolescent.

He turned on the screen and reclined back on the sofa, releasing a sigh at the grouchy expression Potter supported.

_ “Another day, another fucked up story about Voldemort and I,” Potter lamented, making Tom snort. “Wonder what’s on the menu today.” _

“Death and torture, most probably,” Tom replied dryly, feeling a semblance of amusement. “Hurry up, Potter.”

_ Potter set up the computer and then shimmied on his swivel seat, a mulish crease between his brows. A moment of silence after, he began to narrate. _

> Harry woke up in a huge room, which seemed to be made entirely of stone. Tapestries softened the walls, but since all of them seemed to show bloody hunts and snakes devouring screaming women, they didn’t make it cheerful.

_ Potter snorted. _

> He turned himself slowly around, hating the way that his clumsy baby legs dragged. He looked straight up at Voldemort, who considered him in silence. His head was cocked to the side, and he was stroking a serpent draped across his legs. It was too small and the wrong color to be Nagini, Harry was glad to see.

>   
> _  
>  “I see no point in talking to you as a child,”  
>  _  
>  Voldemort said, and his hand moved down the snake’s white scales with a slight rasping sound. Harry heard the same edge in his voice and realized that he was speaking in Parseltongue again.  
>  _  
>  “We both know that you are anything but.”   
>  _  
>  His eyes were intense as they considered Harry.   
>  _  
>  “I am willing to let you live. But I might not do the same for your parents.”  
>  _

_ Potter is a Parselmouth,  _ Tom remembered then, disquieted by the information.

>   
>  _  
>  “It would have been better for you to have killed me,”  
>  _  
>  Harry hissed back. He could always manage Parseltongue more easily than English at this age, which had been helpful when he’d been kidnapped by enemies of his family in his seventh life and convinced an anaconda in their jungle hideout to help him escape.

_ Potter paused as he considered that sentence, a complicated expression on his face, then continued. _

>   
>  His parents in that particular life, Arcturus and Melania Black, had been overjoyed to receive him when he returned to England after almost a year of traveling through South America. They’d been deeply loving people, actually, probably because they had no other children in that world. Of course, that also meant Harry had barely escaped being betrothed to Walburga, but. Well. He’d avoided that, in a rather dramatic fashion.  
> 

_ “Woah woah  _ **_woah,_ ** _ ” Potter exclaimed. “Wait a minute-  _ **_Walburga?_ ** _ The Walburga that was  _ Sirius’ mom?”

“Sirius,” Tom mused. “Sirius Black? Walburga is engaged to her cousin, Orion. I suppose she would be traditional and name her son after one of her ancestors.”

>   
>  _  
>  “Better for your family, of course,”  
>  _  
>  Voldemort said and laughed softly.   
>  _  
>  “I know that. It would have enabled you to die and use your sacrificial magic to ensure your brother defeated me. No, little Harry, I am not going to do that. But tell me how you defeated me in other lives, and your parents will live.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  Harry closed his eyes for a minute. Of course he had to tell Voldemort. The thought made him sick. So many things had been done in so many worlds, and to know that Voldemort would be able to avoid them all…  
> 

>   
>  But the alternative was letting his brother grow up an orphan.  
> 

>   
>  Harry had made hard choices before, but this was something that thrummed through him. Still, he knew what he was going to do. No one else was here to scold him for being selfish, and he had found many ways to defeat Voldemort, including times when he didn’t know what his Horcruxes were or when there had been no Boy-Who-Lived. He could do it again.

>   
>  _  
>  “All right,”  
>  _  
>  he hissed, opening his eyes because he could hear Voldemort picking up his wand. Voldemort probably didn’t trust Harry without being able to use Legilimency on him. That was smarter than many of his incarnations were.   
>  _  
>  “But what guarantee do I have that my parents are going to survive when I’ve told you everything I know?”  
>  _  
> 

_ Potter looked worried, either for his fictional family or the situation, but he also seemed eager. “The way to defeat Voldemort,” he muttered, and Tom stiffened in response. _

Shaking himself free of anxiety, Tom kept his pen and diary ready in wait.

>   
>  Voldemort laughed, a sound that reminded Harry of crackling flames and crumpling paper.   
>  _  
>  “You have lived twenty-seven full lives. Do you think you will tell them to me even with years’ worth of time? It is the secret of the other Voldemorts’ defeats that I wish to know most prominently, but there are so many other things that you could tell me.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  Harry swallowed. He had never been in any situation half this bad. Yes, enemies had captured, tortured, killed him. But he had known he would be reborn each time, and since there was no way of knowing what had happened in the worlds he left behind, he had been able to be more at peace than otherwise. His death had always happened after he defeated Voldemort.  
> 

>   
>  This time, he knew Voldemort would find a way to torture his parents and Jonathan without harming them enough for someone to be empowered with a sacrificial death.  
> 

>   
>  His parents and brother balanced against the weight of the world.  
> 

>   
>  But then, in his original life, how many people had died to keep him safe, believing he was more important than anything else? There was a prophecy that said Jonathan would be the one to defeat Voldemort. That had to mean he was in the position of the Boy-Who-Lived. And Harry was willing to make hard decisions based on that, too.  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “And when I can tell you no more?”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “That will be years. You will come up with something new to tell me so that I will not butcher those you are tied to.”  
>  _  
> 

“Very well done,” Tom murmured, rather pleased with how he was portrayed. “Our quarry has been trapped securely. The only thing left to do is interrogate him.”

>   
>  Harry grimaced. So it all depended on him. But of course it did. That was true of so many things, and he wasn’t going to simply lie back and give up because it was harder this time.  
> 

>   
>  Of course, Voldemort knew that, too. And he would be prepared for it. Harry would have to play this particular game in spirals, always aware that Voldemort could read most of plans out of his head when he came up with them.  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “Yes, I can.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  Harry sighed and looked straight at Voldemort.   
>  _  
>  “The bargain is over the minute I hear that you’ve done something to hurt them. And that includes killing their friends or torturing them, not just killing them.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  Voldemort sneered at him.   
>  _  
>  “Lord Voldemort has no need for rule-breaking. Keep your side of the bargain, and I shall keep mine.”  
>  _  
> 

_ “Am I going to  _ believe  _ that psychopath?” Potter fumed, his rage silent until that moment. “Am I that stupid? What the fuck? Isn’t he like, two hundred or more, technically? Maybe age rots your brain. That would explain Dumbledore.” _

Tom snorted. “Finally something out of your mouth that makes sense.”

>   
>  Harry said nothing for a second. Then he asked,   
>  _  
>  “How exactly are you intending to take care of me yourself? You’ll need to have Death Eaters—”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  In response, Voldemort flicked his wand, and the disgusting wet feeling in Harry’s nappy disappeared. Another flick, and whatever traces of it were left vanished, too. Voldemort lowered his wand and leaned forwards.   
>  _  
>  “You were saying?”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “I’ll get a rash if I keep wearing the same nappy all the time.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  Still watching him intently, Voldemort waved his wand and cast some non-verbal magic. Harry couldn’t imagine where he would have learned the spell to Transfigure something into a nappy, but apparently he had. A piece of bloodstained cloth draped over a table turned into one.  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “You were saying?”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  Harry sighed. All right, so there went that possible avenue of escape. He had half-hoped that Peter might be allowed to tend to him. He would feel guilty enough about betraying his friends that Harry could manipulate him—and he could manipulate with only a very little to go on, after so many lives.

  
  
  
  
_  
Potter huffed a laugh. “Well. At least he tried. I regained my faith in you, fake Harry.”  
_

>   
>  _  
>  “That is a skill that I intend to have you teach me.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  Harry stared before he could stop himself.   
>  _  
>  “But you’re a good manipulator. And I know you would never accept help or a teacher.”  
>  _  
> 

_ * _

> Lord Voldemort felt the ancient pieces of his mind shift with memories of Hogwarts as he laughed aloud at the expression on the child’s face, behind his eyes. In the back of his mind. All astonishment, no feigning. He did truly think that Lord Voldemort would never lower himself to accept another’s teaching. Because it would imply that the other person, his mentor or teacher, was better at something than he was.

>   
>  That was the true genius of kidnapping this multifaceted being who chose to call himself Harry Potter. And it proved that no matter how long Potter had lived, how many people he had been, how many times he had defeated other Voldemorts who did not deserve the title, he was no match for the swirling depths of genius inside the true Lord.  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “I can accept what is needed to help me become stronger.”   
>  _  
>  The child looked away, and Lord Voldemort laughed again, secure in his triumph, mind filled with even more possibilities that multiplied like snowflakes under clouds.   
>  _  
>  “There was a prophecy. I evaded it. I did not attack because I thought I needed to, because offensive force is the only thing that makes me stronger. That is not true. Defensive force will do the same thing. And I will learn from you.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  Potter said nothing for long moments, still as a waiting snake. Lord Voldemort watched him, and did not trouble to hide his amusement. Potter was not watching. Lord Voldemort had time to sit and let his joy and his pride dance through him.  
> 

>   
>  No one is stronger. No one is more clever. The only other immortal being I have met is weaker than me—  
> 

>   
>  It made Lord Voldemort remember, however, that he did not know how this being had come to be immortal, though he knew it was not through Horcruxes, because of the disgust in Potter’s mind when he thought of them, and he desired to know, so he reached out, lashing his will against Potter, bringing his head back around.   
>  _  
>  “You will tell me how your first life conveyed immortality on you.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  Potter shook his head. Lord Voldemort nearly lashed again in his fury at a refusal, but Potter only said,   
>  _  
>  “I think it was because I collected the Deathly Hallows. But I can’t know for sure. I’ve never found a book or anyone who could tell me that was it for sure.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  Lord Voldemort had read children’s books. Of course he had. There was knowledge to be found even in such books, and in the early days of his life, the ones after the orphanage, the only childhood of his that mattered, he read such books to know what fairy tales and other substrate knowledge those around him would expect him to have.  
> 

_ “Huh,” Potter intoned, but didn’t say anything else. _ _  
_ Part of Tom wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him, demand that he spit exactly what was in his mind. What did Potter think, faced with an adaptation of Tom Riddle’s self, one that was not so different from the truth? What did he feel now that he saw the insides of his mind, how cold and calculating and opportunistic it was?   
There was no way of demanding answers, however. Potter was somewhere Tom could not reach, and he had only his interpretations to content himself.

>   
>  He need no longer cater to such expectations, and so the knowledge of the tales had slumbered in his mind. But he could call all such things back to life and memory when he chose. Was he not Lord Voldemort?  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “How did you collect them without meaning to?”  
>  _  
>  Because Lord Voldemort had seen the subtle traps in the descriptions of the Hallows, of course he had, even before he had reached the end of the tale. Lesser wizards hunted the Elder Wand to be the strongest power alive (never knowing they would only ever be second to Lord Voldemort), they hunted the Resurrection Stone to commune with the dead, and they might have hunted the Invisibility Cloak if they had known how different it was from other Cloaks or Disillusionment Charms. But the Hallows   
>  _  
>  killed  
>  _  
>  .  
> 

>   
>  Lord Voldemort was wise. He avoided death.  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “The Cloak belonged to my family,”   
>  _  
>  Potter replied, his eyes seeing long ago and far away and with pathetic emotions.   
>  _  
>  “The Resurrection Stone was in one of your Horcruxes, and Dumbledore, after he destroyed it, left it to me. I didn’t know what it was until I was almost dead the first time—”  
>  _  
> 

Tom scribbled down as story-Potter divulged the information freely, information that he would kill for. One of his Horcruxes, which one? The diary could not be, so it could only be something he came across later in life. Dumbledore had destroyed it—there had to be a story behind that too.   
The cloak. A heirloom? Tom wasn’t so influential and powerful that he could simply  _ request _ a pureblood family’s magical treasures. Asking the help of his allies would be preposterous, at least with this. No—he would have to scheme to get his hands on the cloak, once the opportunity arose.   
_ “That must be an important thing,” Potter muttered to himself, frowning. “I’ll ask Hermione after this.” _ _  
_ It figured that Potter hadn’t even read Beedle the Bard’s tales. Truthfully, he didn’t seem to be the type to read recreationally.

>   
>  _  
>  “You will explain the first time.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “And the Elder Wand belonged to Dumbledore, until Draco Malfoy disarmed him. Then I disarmed Malfoy, and the Elder Wand switched its allegiance to me.”  
>  _  
>  Potter watched him for a second, eyes at least returning to the room, which was only proper when he was confronted with a power as wonderful and overwhelming as that of Lord Voldemort.   
>  _  
>  “I went to die because I was one of your Horcruxes.”  
>  _  
> 

Tom perked up in the middle of writing his notes, eyes riveted on the screen. A  _ concrete _ confession— would Potter notice this one? Would the Horcrux fog his mind and make him forget that tidbit? He had a lot of ideas on why that phenomenon might happen, but first he had to see whether his hypothesis was true.   
As he gleefully expected, Potter realized  _ nothing. _   
_ “Dumbledore’s wand,” Potter said, but a haze had come over his eyes then, as if he had suddenly drank a dose of Dreamless Sleep. It reminded Tom of the Imperius Curse, interestingly. Such a curious Horcrux. _ _  
_ Dumbledore’s wand was a plain, brown thing. Tom assumed that it was one that he had procured later in life, rather than the apple-wood one that belonged to him right now.

>   
>  Lord Voldemort stared. Then he controlled himself. Lord Voldemort was the target of stares.   
>  _  
>  “How did that happen?”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “When you attacked me—I mean, when the Voldemort of that world attacked me. His soul was so unstable that a small piece of it came loose and attached itself to me. I didn’t know for a long time. But Dumbledore left me memories that alerted me of what I was. So I walked into the Forbidden Forest and let him kill me.”  
>  _  
> 

Potter was still for the entire paragraph. He sat and moved his lips, but the words were monotone, there was no true comprehension. His consciousness had diminished, and it was almost as if the Horcrux within him was making sure that he did  _ not _ learn his status—but  _ of course.  _ If Potter learnt of his predicament, with his hatred for Lord Voldemort, he would surely commit suicide out of a martyr complex. Tom had never seen anyone so selfless before, to the extremes… What a fascinating, vividly stupid boy!

>   
>  Lord Voldemort sat still. The serpent in his lap stirred and hissed a question, but Lord Voldemort did not touch it. He stared at the child—not controlling himself, but it did not matter, the child was looking off into the distance, and he was only a toddler in body, he was no threat to the great and mighty Lord Voldemort.  
> 

>   
>  But at that moment, Lord Voldemort found himself in the presence of a power, a might, a strength, that he did not comprehend. It was like turning around and seeing a dark ocean behind him where land had always been before.  
> 

>   
>  He had found, when he had fallen into Potter’s mind in the cottage at Godric’s Hollow, a profound lack of fear. He had thought he understood why. Of course Potter would only be born again, and he had thought he would do some good by sacrificing his life for his brother and enabling Lord Voldemort to be defeated that way. That sort of sacrifice, Lord Voldemort could understand. Never commit, but understand.  
> 

Tom could understand too, in a way. Weighing one’s choices for the sake of gain—it was only natural to him, and he could recognize the same traits in others when prominent.

>   
>  But Potter had walked to his death when he had no idea that he would be reborn. The first time. When he had collected the Deathly Hallows accidentally. When he knew there was a Horcrux inside him, and if he simply evaded capture and that Voldemort’s wand, he stood a good chance of living forever.  
> 

>   
>  That fearlessness was a power.  
> 

>   
>  But Lord Voldemort did not know it. He could not comprehend it. It stretched before him, as alien and unknowable as—as nothing. Nothing he had faced before.  
> 

>   
>  He brought his hand down hard on the side of the chair, startling the snake and bringing Potter’s gaze back to him. Potter tilted his head and looked at him with too much understanding. Lord Voldemort would bear past it. Because he was the genius and Potter was not. Experience was not the same as intelligence.  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “That is hundreds of years gone for you. How do I know that I can trust you to remember it?”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “Ever since I started being reborn, I don’t forget anything,”  
>  _  
>  Potter said simply.   
>  _  
>  “When I found myself getting ready to be born after I died at the end of my first life, I suddenly remembered everything, including things that I’d been too old to recall for years. I could recite every conversation I’ve ever had.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “Such memories are possible.”   
>  _  
>  Lord Voldemort had found a spell in Egypt that imitated it, but he had never cast it because he had a perfect memory naturally, by right of birth.   
>  _  
>  “But they would overwhelm your brain after a time.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “Mine don’t. I think it has to be because I’m Master of Death—or whatever ridiculous title you feel like attaching to someone who managed to get all these artifacts together and didn’t know what he was doing,”  
>  _  
>  Potter added with sudden disgust.   
>  _  
>  “It’s like they’re in different parts of my brain. I have to concentrate to find them. But I know they’re always there, and that they won’t have faded the next time I look for them.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  Lord Voldemort remained silent, and stroked his snake. That was another power he did not have, did not understand.  
> 

>   
>  But he could have had it. If he had wanted to use the spell in Egypt. If he had not had better uses for some parts of his brain. It did not concern him as did Potter’s lack of fear of death.  
> 

>   
>  And even that lack, he would come to understand in time. There was nothing in the natural world that Lord Voldemort did not understand, did not comprehend, could not master.  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “I wish to know when your last meal was, so that I may feed you and you will not be tiresome now.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  “I’m used to going hungry.”   
>  _  
>  Potter shrugged.   
>  _  
>  “It was a few hours before you—arrived. I’ll be fine until the morning.”  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  Lord Voldemort was glad enough to stand and leave. He did not see the necessity of threatening Potter a last time, because Potter understood the stakes, and because the boy was filled with the sickening belief that he needed to sacrifice his freedom for the good of his family, and because he was clever enough to have come up with the right threat the first time.  
> 

>   
>  He did leave behind a blanket and pillow. Was he not a just and merciful Lord?  
> 

_ Potter made a surprisingly kind face at the screen, biting his lips. Tom’s eyes darted to the movement for a moment before returning to the boy’s eyes, trying to see the depths of his mind despite the contrary evidence that he couldn’t. _ _  
_ _ “Well… At least, after it’s done, I’ll remember what he was like,” he spoke, but his words were nonsensical to Tom. What did he mean? What  _ could  _ he mean? “He’ll have someone who remembers. That would be enough.” _ _  
_ _ Is he, _ Tom thought, with a sudden hitch in his breath, a stumble in his chest,  _ talking about me? _

_ * _

>   
>  Harry leaned his head down into the pillow and sighed. Yes, he had decided after sorting through some memories of his previous lives that he usually left untouched, this was the worst single situation he had ever been in.  
> 

>   
>  He had had worse lives. And even now, he could think of powers that he could use to escape from Voldemort.  
> 

>   
>  But they lay unwanted and repulsive at the bottom of his soul. Harry wouldn’t touch them except for a better reason than he had now. Right now, he and Jonathan were alive, and so were Lily and James and Sirius—and presumably Remus, although Harry hadn’t had the chance to meet the one in this world. He could bear cold, mental and physical.  
> 

>   
>  Harry smiled a little bitterly.  
>  _  
>  If anyone should be able to, it’s me.  
>  _  
> 

>   
>  No, he would stay here until things either changed to become intolerable, or he was able to do something that would let him escape without endangering his family.  
> 

>   
>  The one thing he thought of before he curled up under the blanket and fell asleep, the one threat that he hadn’t faced before, was a wonder as to whether Voldemort could corrupt him. If he stayed here, and Voldemort talked to him but didn’t threaten his family or torture anyone in front of him…  
> 

>   
>  Hermione had told Harry in his twentieth life, when he was a Gryffindor called Zachary Bold who didn’t exist in any other world, that she was half-afraid of him. She didn’t know about any of his other lives. She just thought “Zack” was way too open-minded and tolerant, and forgave Slytherins too much, and would get betrayed someday.  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  Could I tolerate Voldemort? Could I start convincing myself that he’s not so bad?  
>  _  
> 

“Why would you have to convince yourself of that?” Tom spoke to the screen, tone harsh and frigid.  _ I am, who are you kidding? Don’t try to justify my actions, when you don’t even know the reasons I did them. I thought you were smarter than that. _ _  
_ _ “That he’s not so bad?” Potter asked himself, disbelieving. “He  _ is _ that bad! I don’t care how much you’ve lived, but Voldemort’s actions aren’t forgivable!” _ _  
_ “Even when you’re saying it, your face is already  _ convinced!” _ Tom snarled at Potter, watching the boy emote as if no one was there. “Say what you mean, you idiotic Gyrffindor!”

>   
>  But Harry didn’t truly fear that. Even if Voldemort was different here, less impulsive and insane, Harry had twenty-seven different experiences of him.  
> 

>   
>  _  
>  That’s the one good thing about being immortal and having such a weight of experience. They make it easy for me to forgive—but not forget.  
>  _  
> 

_ “Chapter’s done,” Potter said, leaning back in his seat and swiveling in agitation.  _ _  
_ Mirroring his movements, Tom reclined back into his cushion and simmered in mixed emotions, more than he could handle if he lifted the lid.  _ Control it, _ he told himself, a tremulous sigh trapped within his throat.  _ Control. You aren’t like them. You’re in control. You’re strong. _

_ I am, _ he told himself after a while.  _ I am. I’m strong. _

He released a deep breath, looking up only to see Potter leaning back in, a determined twist to his (admittedly) fine features.

_ “There must be a quicker way,” he said. “The word count is above two hundred thousand! I’m not Ron, but like, I’m not  _ Hermione _ either. I can’t read that much for fun.” _

“Of course not, dimwitted buffoon that you are,” Tom sighed, rolling his eyes.

_ Potter clicked the mouse, and he seemed to navigate the site with an intensity that he hadn’t had for the reading. It was mildly interesting that for all his faults, at least he was attentive when absorbed in an activity. Tom watched patiently as he fiddled with some controls that popped from the side, humming a song that he didn’t recognize. _

_ “So many tags,” the boy murmured. “Mature? What’s mature? Merlin’s— all right. Leaving that, why is there even a tag for these stuff? Are people actually  _ writing  _ them?!” Then, after his face became amiable, his eyes flew wide open. “SEVERUS SNAPE? THE SEVERUS SNAPE I KNOW?!!” _

_ He devolved into a series of groans and whimpers, hiding his face with his hands and shifting in his seat. Tom snorted at the dramatics, vaguely entertained. _

_ Continuing, Potter commented without context, confusing him further. Once the complaint session was finished, Potter typed a word on the keyboard, and a white little window rolled down. _

_ “‘Horcruxes’ is  _ taggable?”  _ Potter exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think about that before?!” _

Tom blinked, slowly. “It seems like you aren’t as stupid as you act. Thank Merlin for small mercies.”

But even so, Potter seemed more and more mortified as he browsed the stories at his disposal. Tom couldn’t read so far away, which rendered him useless when Potter took his advice from earlier and read  _ silently,  _ for the first time. He was forced to sit tight and wait without anything to do while Potter gained whatever information, no doubt rejoicing at the advantage over him.

_ “Oh my God, it’s first-person-view, and not even a good one,” the Gryffindor said, aghast. “Okay, fuck the Horcruxes. I don’t want to read this.” _

“Thank you,” Tom replied, though the boy couldn’t hear him. At least, with the earlier story, he could track whatever happened.

Once the screen went black, he heaved a sigh and massaged his temples.

This headache was something he had to live with. No doubt, Potter would cause a lot more stress for him in the future, so it would do him good to prepare for it.

He didn’t want to ruminate on Voldemort’s thoughts, which had hit a little too close home. These were mere caricatures—no more real than the lies he spewed daily. Yet the part with  _ powers  _ had struck a chord within him, managed to harmonize with the essence of his personality. Was it a coincidence? It had to be. How could a stranger, who certainly knew him less than himself, acquire such a familiarity with his mind that they could replicate his thoughts, to that degree?

_ Fearlessness is a power. _

He wasn’t weak. Fear didn’t make him weak— how could that be?  _ Fear _ let him take control, making him act and plan for contingencies upon contingencies, unable to stop before  _ absolute safety  _ was achieved. If not for fear, he would not exist today.

Tom tried to  _ think _ and see why his future  _ (fictional)  _ self would consider fear a weakness, and not an advantage. What were the benefits of fear?  _ Those, _ he knew well. Yet he had never deigned to delve too deeply into the disadvantages, too certain that he was in the right.

Fear was a limiting force—it made one see their boundaries and act in care of them, made one aware of threats and rewards. When used effectively, it was a crucial tool in his hands.

_ When not, _ Tom realized with a start,  _ it’s a limiting force, after all. _

A  _ limiting force,  _ in his own words— it limited the sight, the capabilities, and the possibilities. Risks required a minimal amount of fear, when taken well. Fear caused stress, when overexerted—it hindered intelligence and quick-wit, and it made coordination of the self more difficult. A  _ limiting  _ force, indeed.

Struck by this unwelcome realization, Tom wondered how many opportunities he had let pass him by, bound by his fear of losing what he had won. What had he overlooked, deeming it too dangerous without ever considering it seriously? What had he ignored with his lacking wisdom?

_ I have played myself. _

The Room had really shown him greatness, in this case.  _ Fearlessness,  _ a lofty goal for one as fearful, as ambitious, as self-preserving as Tom Marvolo Riddle, the Heir of Slytherin. A coward without power of his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know, tom riddle's a really sympathetic character if you think about it. _if you think about it_ being the key words :p
> 
> also, memes:  
> harry: harry is a horcrux  
> the scarcrux: don't listen to them shhhh
> 
> tom: what a doof  
> also tom: I'm a doof D:

**Author's Note:**

> We have.... more than 27 fics to go through. Result: the longest unresolved sexual tension fic ever


End file.
